The Skittering Chaos (Worm/Hazbin Hotel)

The Skittering Chaos 4

More interactions between Skitter, Skidmark, and Angel Dust, then a surprise visit at the door, by demons, with guns… Wonder how this will turn out…

Any and all feedback is, as always, highly appreciated!

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“Jesus, finally, I thought you had an aneurysm or something,” Angel Dust says almost immediately. The more and more Angel Dust talks the more he reminds me of Alec.

“I’m sorry that I wanted to give something that sounded this important some proper consideration,” I deadpan and Angel Dust shrugs at that.

“Eh, probably a good idea, at least you’re name’s better than some schmucks around here that go with something stupid,” at least here you couldn’t have your nickname assigned to you like your cape name could be. When I had originally gotten the Skitter name I didn’t particularly care for it. It wasn’t the best but it also wasn’t the worst. It had just sounded like I was low and pathetic, something that skittered around and was barely even worth noticing as most skittering things were. Over the years however, I had started to grow more attached to the name, despite going by Weaver at that time. Not that I would have ever admitted it. I had been trying to convince both the PRT, Protectorate, and myself that I was a fully committed hero that didn’t need to be watched any harder than I already was.

“So why Skitter?” Angel Dust asks, by this time, Skidmark has come back, counting a wad of cash, most of them appear to be either one dollar or five dollar notes.

“It was my villain name, and the name I was using when I was at my happiest.”

“Villain name huh? So you were one of those super powered guys from Earth, what was your power?”

“Bug control, though at the end of my life I had my powers altered and I could control people, at the cost of my sanity.”

“Ooof, sounds rough. Yeah I gotta gal pal named Cherri Bomb, girl was a pretty decent villain. She’s even got some territory in the city. She came to every one of my shows and after a few fucks, we kinda became friends.”

“Ya damn spider cracker, I thought you was gay.”

“I am gay nigga, but if it’s with the right people its fine, or a three some. Also kinda helped that she was using a strap-on,” I tilt my head slightly. What’s a strap-on?

“So anyways, you got bugs all over the place then huh? Learned how to use some bug magic or something?” thankfully the subject is back to something I’m familiar with.

”No, I haven’t quite figured how to do anything with bugs yet.”

“Nah but she knows a bit of magic, first time I saw her she blew away a bunch of mother fuckers with some magic blast shit, and she also magic upped them clothes she’s wearing.”

“Wait really? Ha! So you're telling me if I do this,” Angel Dust grabs a hold of the collar of his suit jacket and slowly pulls it off just enough that the shoulders of the shirt he had underneath was showing. Then he starts leaning against the table before a leg slides onto it. The Jacket continues to fall slightly as he comes up close, reaches a hand out, scratches under my chin, and whispers.

“Hey baby, you wanna know how loud a professional whore can make you scream?” he sits there a moment on the table, his eyes darting down, but seems disappointed about something. Was he trying to… disappear my clothes? How very… Alec of him…

“I don’t have to concentrate to keep my clothes transformed. Even if I did, I have clothes on underneath my costume.”

“Aww. It’d be funny though,” he drops the sultry act immediately and retreats back to his couch. Skidmark finally seems satisfied with the money that he got and takes a chair at the end of the table. Alec and Aisha would have loved Angel Dust. Probably would have even brought him into the Undersiders if he was a cape, or just recruited him into their ranks if he wasn’t. Aisha's still alive as far as I know, but Alec, it was a long shot but…

“Angel Dust.”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” the spider demon interrupts. Ignoring the interruption, I continue.

“You wouldn’t happen to keep track of the capes that end up down here do you?”

“Hmm? Nah, not really, I’ve always been a more of a look out for yourself kind of guy, ya know?” oh I realise, I had just hoped that this particular part was where he and Alec differed, though maybe I could ask Mimi, she seems to be rather into popular cape culture, or just had a fascination with me enough to know about me, maybe she would know?

“Trying to find your team mates?” Skidmark asks and I merely nod.

“Damn, hope you find them, took me like sixty years to find my brother and sister, and that was with all of us searching, or well, two of us searching, brother’s a dick and didn’t give a shit,” Angel comments.

“Yeah, it was a damn miracle when I found Squealer again. Doing what she always did in the Merchants and was working on cars and shit. She ain’t no tinker no more, but damn can she make an engine purr,” Skidmark chuckles and a wide grin spreads across his face, ”I would love to give her a Mustang or some shit to fix up, she’d grab my by the collar and fuck me till my fucking hips broke, after she fixed it up that is. Course, probably still blow me right there in appreciation.”

“Ha, I swear your girl loves cars more than any man I’ve ever heard of, you’d think she was a tranny.”

“Hahaha, you’d fucking think, but nah, she is one hundred and fucking ten percent all woman. And I mean come on; you think she’d have ass and tits like that if she was a bro?”

“I don’t know there buster, surgeons down here are pretty good, while I got lucky with these baby’s,” Angel crossed his arms under the fluff and made them bounce a bit, emphasising his point, “most of the whores around here got at least a bit of a boob job, or do some magic hocus pocus to make them bigger,” Angel’s eyes got wider as he realised something and then turns to me.

“Hey since you are already altering your body parts, you think you’d be able to give yourself a boob job? While you got the ass and legs, you need the tits to match ‘em sister,” I’m glad for my mask because all I can do is just stare at Angel incredulously. Granted, when I was younger I had something of breast envy and would likely have tried to do just as Angel Dust said, but I was quite fine with how my breasts were now thank you very much. The puberty fairy had decided that I was going to have small breasts, smaller than my mothers, and I was alright with that. Besides, if I had actually started developing larger breasts, it would have led to back problems and affected my fighting which I very much didn’t need, especially then.

“No thank you, I’m quite comfortable with my bust size at the moment.”

“Hey your loss tiny tits,” I gracefully ignore the dig at the size of my bosom. Hoping to bring this conversion back to a subject I find more interesting, I interject.

“We were talking about magic before, yes?”

“Oh yeah sure, uh, well I ain’t the greatest with the stuff, I know a few tricks and such… Say you said you were a bug villain or something before right?”

“That’s right.”

“So what could you turn your body parts into clothes too?”

“No, I was exclusively a bug controller.”

“So where’d ya learn to turn your body parts into clothing? Steal some guy's magic book or something?”

“No, and they have those things around here?” Angel Dust shrugs his shoulders.

“Eh, yeah, kinda, though they’re mostly controlled by the nobility and shit. They’re mostly kept off the internet by a demon Overlord called Velvet, though you can find some stuff if you look deep enough. It’ll get ya banned off social media though if your sharing magic shit, and then the TV stations’ll smear ya for anything they can get their hand on.”

“Does this Velvet control both the TV stations and most of the internet?”

“Nah Velvet doesn’t control the TV, that’d be Vox, a buddy of hers. They’re part of something that some people are calling the Demonic Triumvirate. New fucking name, no idea where it comes from,” it sounds like some of cape culture has managed to influence things here in Hell enough that people were copying some things from Earth. That will probably increase now with the large amounts of people that have probably ended up here during Scion went on his rampage.

“Yeah I work for the other one in the Triumvirate. Valentino, he controls most of the porn, sex, and anything related to lust here in Pentagram city,” I consider telling Angel Dust about my run in with some of Valentino’s thugs, but I brush it off quickly. No need to bring up something like that, especially with someone I just met who works for the person who’s gang I had to defend myself from.

“You said that there is a sort of nobility in hell. What would it take to get access to their libraries?”

“Oh you know just a couple deals and the possibility of eternal servitude, the usual stuff when it comes to self important assholes around here,” Angel Dust makes a dismissive wave of his hands as he says “assholes.”

“They got a lot of fucking money and shit, wouldn’t mind having a crack at one of their vaults and shit… hey Skitty, you guys did pretty good at that bank in Brockton, you think when you guys all get back together we could plan a heist or some shit?” getting access to that kind of knowledge... I believe Sir Francis Bacon was the one that coined the term; “knowledge is power” back during the renaissance. Not that I had an easy way of checking. In any case, I had always tried to practice that sentiment when I was a cape, researching into the scene as much as I could when I was planning on breaking into it. I had gone over information regarding possible people who would oppose us taking over Brockton with Lisa.

I continued this practice in the Wards by meticulously going over the different profiles of the SlaughterHouse Nine and generally any cape profiles and cape fights I could get a hold of when I was doing my information gathering sessions. I overheard some people talk about how they had updated my threat rating to a Thinker 3 along with my Master 10. I could kind of see it considering the amount of research I did. Though that they added a 2 of everything else? That was just a bit overkill in my opinion. Then again, I did carry a gun with me so Blaster 2 kind of made sense. But still, Tinker 2? What exactly had I Tinkered?

“We would require internal plans of the place first of all. The bank job was something that was planned weeks if not months in advance, and I was only brought onto the team maybe a couple of days before we went off and did the job.”

“But you could do it if you really wanted to?” I could practically see the dollar signs in Skidmark’s eyes.

“Perhaps if Tattletale managed to keep her power maybe, but considering how everyone has been disconnected from their powers here I’m not so sure we would have access to that.”

“You sure? I always kinda saw you as the leader, no offence to that Grue guy, but after a while you kinda stood out, like Grue and Tattle were the faces, and you were the brains behind it all and shit.”

“Not exactly, while I'm good at combat, Tattletale was the one who was gathering the information and processed it. We had a backer who was the leader of it all. Do you remember Coil.”

“What that small fry? Sure he was polite and shit, but he didn’t have all that much power.”

“He had much more than he let on. He was the one in charge of the Undersiders, the Travelers, not to mention that he had Uber, Leet, and Circus on his payroll. He also had a secret underground lair where he had a powerful pre-cog under his control. Plus his civilian ID, one Thomas Calvert, became the PRT director for a short period of time, before I killed him.”

“Wait, shit, he had all that? Muther fucker, good thing we never went after his ass or we would of been up to our eyeballs in shitheads.”

“He also had a couple of spies in your organisation; Trainwreck was one of his, as well as in every other organisation. He was also the one who leaked out the Empire’s personal information,” Skidmark’s mouth morphs into a scowl when I mention that Trainwreck had been a spy.

“Muther fucker! That fuck! If I ever find that Tinker piece of shit I will fucking rip his god damn ass a new one!”

“Mind if I watch?” Angel Dust interjects and Skidmark turns on him.

“Shut up ya Ho, not in that way!” Skidmark continues muttering a stream of “Muther fucker” and other insults aimed at both his traitorous subordinate as well as Coil. I hear something about Purity, then something about a drug house. It seems Purity’s rampage might have damaged the Merchants quite a bit with her random acts of destruction.

“Boy you sure got him riled up,” Angel remarks with a toothy grin.

“We are recently deceased. It makes sense that some of us still harbour feelings for our life before.”

“Hey I ain’t sayin’ nothing about that. You guys do you,” Angel says with a shrug.

“So anyways, you wanna learn magic so much, why don’t you think about all the different things about yourself? You got Antennae that can shape shift, you got a bunch of arms,” as if to put emphasis on the multiple arms part, Angel suddenly lifts his own up and two more pairs appear underneath them, all doing jazz hands. “And I can make webs and stuff. So, anything new that you’ve noticed recently,” unconsciously, I rub at my neck. That phantom lump in my throat was something new. I tried ignoring it to the best of my ability, but maybe it was something more?

Silkworms were known to make silk from glands near their mouth, and I was rather fluffy like them. I could also see about doing as Angel Dust did and manipulate the number of limbs I had, that could actually be fairly useful, make people think that I only have a certain number of limbs, then come out with more. Using a bit of magic, I unfold my antennae from their mask transformation. Angel Dust looks a bit surprised at that, he really shouldn’t, I had already told him that my mask was a magically transformed part of my body.

“Would you be able to do that again? I would like to see if I can replicate that,” I start paying attention with my antennae to the magic within and around Angel Dust. Once more Angel shrugs.

“Yeah, sure thing, Doll face,” then Angel Dust proceeds to go back to only having a pair of arms rather than three pairs. He does this a few times, changing up the number of pairs he is releasing. I think I can follow what he is doing. It’s actually fairly close to how I had been transforming my wings and antennae into clothing. Experimentally, I retract my lower pair of arms, and find myself in possession of only two arms. Since I didn’t alter them, but rather retracted them, I can feel them, kind of. It’s more of a phantom sensation than anything concrete. It takes almost no magic at all, and it’s almost imperceptible unless I’m really focusing on how much magic it actually takes to change them. I do it a few times before settling back to only having two arms, then transform my wings/costume to match only having two arms.

“So what, your antennae can see magic? ‘Cause you picked that up crazy quick,” Angel asks while watching me as well.

“Something like that. If it weren’t for my antennae, I wouldn’t be able to walk in here with this costume.”

“Oh yeah? What would’ve ya been wearing then?”

“An oversized shirt and some shorts.”

“Well at least you got clothes, I knew a few guys that didn’t even have clothes before they got purged.”

“I nearly was one of those poor fucks,” Skidmark comments having calmed down while we talked.

“Luckily I died a while before the purge so I got time to cosy up to my first pimp,” that has to be the third time that this 'purge' was mentioned since I’ve ended up here in Hell. At first I didn’t think anything of it, but it keeps coming up.

“What is this ‘purge’?” both of them look at me like I had grown a second head before Angel turns to Skidmark.

“Jesus, you really haven’t been telling her much have ya,” Angel comments.

“It never came up and I was busy with shit.”

“We all know what you were busy with,” unfortunately for my attempt at getting a full eight hours of sleep, yes we all did.

“Yeah and it was a damn good time too,” rather than let this go on again, I clear my throat before they could continue their banter. This 'Purge' sounds rather important and I didn’t want to get side tracked like how our talks about magic kept getting side tracked.

“Oh yeah the purge. Well basically every year some angel fucks from heaven show up and start fucking erasing everyone they can get their hands on. Looks like they’ll be busy this year though. So many poor fucks are out on the street that they might not even get a quarter clear before their time is up.”

“But I thought people couldn’t die in Hell.”

“You’d think so sister, but no, see the angels got these weapons that erase a demon from existence. There’s even something of a black market for them around Pentagram city,” Angel interjects, and then looks thoughtful “I know my boss has got like a vault full of them. Enough that he regularly lends out a few to people to assassinate people he really wants just gone from existence,” so even in Hell you can die. That's… disheartening. Why did these Angels do this? Weren’t people already in Hell? Why do they need to give them a final death? Especially those who were out on the streets? Could they have gotten people I knew? Had they gotten Alec?

“Why do they do this?” I ask and Angel just shrugs.

“Something to do with overpopulation, I don’t know,” this is starting to sound like Hell has a problem as bad if not worse than Earth Bet’s problem with Endbringers. Only it was with the supposed angels of God rather than some toys of a depressed eldritch Entity under the subconscious control of a mass murdering egomaniac.

“What’s a purge like?” instead of Angel answering, Skidmark does.

“It starts out with the toll of a bell. Then the next thing you know, the sky splits open and angels start descending from heaven into hell. They’re tall, almost mechanical like things. More like Terminators with wings and fucked up faces and shit than winged humans. They go through the streets fucking up everything that they come across. It’s meticulous. First they try to kill everything on the streets. It’s a slaughter at first, then slowly the survivors get whittled away until there are none left on the streets. Usually there are enough survivors on the streets that by the time the bell tolls, the angels don’t start breaking down doors… but from what I’ve heard, a few years, when angels start breaking down doors are the worst years. See property here in Hell is kinda a big thing. Since the angels are so systematic in the purge, if you got a house, then you’re probably safe if you keep quiet. But if all or most of the survivors out on the street get purged… well then they start knocking and searching for a new target. They go door to door, breaking shit and searching. You get cornered like that? You’re fucked,” Skidmark shuddered. “Sometimes… you can still hear their screams…”

“Hey weren’t you one of the street survivors one of those years?” Angel asks. Skidmark had a far away look on his face as if he was seeing something else. I can see his eyes were getting watery as he keeps blinking faster than before, his fist clench, and a scowl appears on his face.

“Yeah… first year… I had just met back up with Squealer… Me, Squealer, and Harry, that was the old guy I was talking about before there Skitty, the guy who helped me find Squealer. We were celebrating around a drum fire. Saved up some money for some of the good shit, something some nerds called Daedric Lava Whiskey. Was some pretty good shit, when we heard the bell toll. We didn’t know what it meant so me and Squeals kept drinking, but Harry. He got this look on his face. Then he threw his shit away and grabbed the guns we had gotten. I was still figuring out magic and shit so I had only just done it to my pistol. Now Harry, he was the most lucky go guy you could ever meet. Nothing got him down and nothing ever scared him. But the moment that bell tolled, and the sky split? He looked terrified. We ran into an alleyway. You ever been in the alleys Skitty?” I remember my short jaunt through them. With the senses granted by my antennae, I had been able to avoid any trouble in the alleyway I had been walking down. Though there had been a lot. Demon dogs, cats, rats, and that was all I could hear. There were smells there too. Some smelt sweet and inviting, but I could also smell the iron like tang of blood there too so I had avoided those paths.

“I’ve been down them once.”

“So you know you only go down them deep, like we did, if you’re truly desperate, or stupid.”

“Or ya got a lot of firepower,” Angel adds in.

“Yeah, either way, we start booking it, it was in one of those intersections that I saw my first angel. We came running into the place and suddenly saw it there just as it cut down some poor fucker. Sliced his throat then as he was gagging on his own blood, she shoved a spear right through him. We watched as the spear came out of his still screaming mouth, blood spilling out as his eyes rolled up and he collapsed to the ground. Something sort of came out of him, like a mist, pouring all over and colouring the ground a weird colour. We hightailed it out of there as fast as we could, and started climbing. Big mistake but we didn’t have an option. Another fuck came flying down on us, Harry shouted at us to duck and we did so, but she wasn’t going for us. No she was going for Harry, sliced him deep and he just lay there while we got up and ran for a sky light.”

“Fuckin’ hell, how’d ya escape,” Angel asks. Skidmark didn’t look at him, but he gave a small nod.

“Sewer system.”

“Sewers? There’re always angels down there on purge night,” Angel interrupts. Good to know if I ever need some place to hide on ‘purge night’ from the terminator angels I was hearing about. Skidmark however ignores him as he goes on.

“After we fell through the skylight we found that there was a tunnel in the bathroom so we jumped down there. Got lost in the tunnels, after that it was a fucking game of hid and seek all fucking night against two angels, and whatever angel patrols were down there. Eventually we found a dark enough place in the sewers, found a pipe that was full, and drowned ourselves in there,” Angel looks at him in disgust while I look incredulous. However after a moment I realise that it wasn’t that bad a plan for something on the fly. If you can’t die by any other means than an angel’s weapon than it might be a good idea to just kill yourself and hid your body until it’s all over. Though sewer waters are supposed to be moving usually, at least when a person flushes, at least I think so.

“How did you keep your bodies from being discovered after you drowned yourself? Wouldn’t the water have dislodged you eventually?”

“Kinda what we had been hoping on, that it would dislodge us eventually after we drowned. We swam deep into the pipe is how, plus there ain’t a lot of water flow on purge night, just the usual flow of the water there. Either way, it worked. Our corpses didn’t come out of there for a month though… Drowning fucking sucks…” we sit there for a while. Skidmark looking disgruntled while we watch him. Neither Angel nor I are rude enough to interrupt Skidmark’s brood. I never knew Harry, but considering that not only had he reunited Skidmark and Squealer together, he had obviously been a friend. Skidmark looks up towards Angel Dust.

“You see what you fucking did ya spider cracker? We was having a good fucking time then you had to fuck it all up and shit.”

“Hey you’re the one that ain’t telling Doll face here basic fuckin’ information.”

“Pff, fuck off cracker,” Skidmark gets up and heads towards another room, “If I’m gonna have to listen to your bitch ass talk shit you better have some fucking beer or some shit.”

“Yeah I got a twelve pack yesterday, got a good deal for it.”

“Like a sale and shit, or you just sucked off the manager?”

“Eh, sale, the manager was an uptight broad,” not really knowing what to do in this situation I just sit there, Angel meanwhile examines his nails. With nothing else to do I ponder on the angels. Skidmark had said that they were like Terminators. I have never watched the movie myself. Mom and Dad had always said it was too violent for us when we would watch movies. I think I remember there being a movie night with it as the feature film while I was in the Wards. I had blown off the invitation though in favour of examining the latest footage of Defiant and Dragon’s fight against the Nine so I could take some notes on their current roster, as well as possible strategies to use against them.

If they were like terminators though, then it might be prudent to watch it, or better yet, to examine some footage of the purge. If the purge nights weren’t censored like Endbringer fights had been, then there should be a plethora of videos and such to examine in case I ever found myself in the situation of defending myself against an angel. Even if it was censored however, if it was a Hell wide phenomenon, then it would be somewhere, like the magic tomes that we had talked about being on Hell’s version of the internet, I would just have to dig deep to find the information I might need in the future. For now though…

“Do you mind if I try something out?” I ask Angel as I switch back to trying to focus on magic once more.

“Sure baby cakes, but just so you know, I charge double for women,” I don’t even roll my eyes. First I start feeling and sensing at the phantom lump that had been growing since I had supper last night, and the sensation had only gotten worse since breakfast. I feel around the area in my mouth, and once more find a sort of second set of almost nipple-like things. The first smaller set being there for spit and such things and more on the lower mouth than the others, the others though are bigger, thicker, and more on my lower tongue. If I was correct, and my appearance actually meant something then I might be able to make silk. Not as protective as spider silk but it would at least work better than transforming my various limbs into my costume, especially my new antennae since those senses could come in handy. Kind of like how you can force spit out of their little spit nipples, I flex a bit and-

I rush my hand up to my mouth as a pair of gooey silken projectiles fire out of my mouth and into my hand. There is still some liquid silk in my mouth and I spit it out onto my hand. Both the initial projectiles and the silk still left in my mouth harden into some silken thread.

“I assume that was supposed to happen?” Angel asks and I nod.

“Yeah… It seems that I can make silk.”

“Huh, cool I guess,” I make to reply to him that yes, it was in fact cool. When I hear something. I turn my head and move my antennae towards the doorway. With my regular hearing I can’t hear anything, but with my antennae now out, I can hear the stomping of feet up the stairs, at least six pairs of them. I rest my hand on the knife I had gotten from the lizard man and get up from my seated position.

“Something the matter?” Angel asks as he watches me.

“I don’t-” I hear the tell tale racketing of a gun and the cocking back of a few pistol slides. I don’t know who they are after, but better to be prepared. I make my way over to the wall beside the door, my knife now out and ready to take the first person that might try to break in.

“Six men I think, they have guns and are coming up the stairs. Anyone they might be after?” I look back at Angel and see that he’s already pulled a Tommy gun with some spider decals on it from somewhere.

“Not that I know of. This is Valentino’s turf. No one’s stupid enough to try shit on an Overlords turf.”

“Then you're underestimating human stupidity,” I can think of a few idiots that might decide it was a good idea to attack an Overlord’s territory, though I didn’t hear anything going on outside so they must be here for some sort of mission or something. I have a sneaking suspicion that they are going to come to this door. Skidmark comes walking back in from what I assume was Angel’s kitchen and sees us with our guns out.

“We might have company,” I simply say as Skidmark finishes a sip, puts down the beer, and pulls out a pistol from behind his back. He must not have been expecting trouble since he left his baseball cannon in the van. With his other hand he pulls out a cell phone and starts tapping. Outside I can hear someone talking.

“She went in here,” I hear someone outside say as footsteps get close to the door.

“They’re here,” I tell Angel and Skidmark softly. Angel has taken cover behind the table while Skidmark has entered another room and is peeking out with his pistol. I hear a run up from outside and the door bursts open. I stab at the breacher’s stomach and wrap a hand around his head to try and pull him away so I can deal with him out of Angel and Skidmark’s crossfire. The breacher is able to barely stop my knife however we do topple back my way. I hear some gunfire as Skidmark and Angel open up on the invaders, and something metallic hits the ground by me.

The demon looks like some sort of hell hound with black fur with red highlights in it around where his hair is thicker. We struggle on the ground for a moment. He’s trying to force me to drop my knife by putting pressure on my wrist. I push out with my extra limbs and decide to oblige him. I drop the knife into my other right hand and deliver a few swift jabs straight into his stomach. Surprise and pain fills his eyes and I push him off. As he is curled on the floor I waste no time stabbing him in the throat, then as he’s gurgling on the ground I roughly jerk his head up by the snout and shove roughly through the soft tissue under his jaw straight up. I meet only a bit of resistance as it penetrates past the roof of his mouth. His eyes roll back and he is no longer gagging on blood. I feel something come from him to me but I ignore it in favour of the fight.

I leave my knife in him and spot the thing that fell beside me. Some sort of carbine. The shooting has gone a bit quiet as I grab for the carbine, and suddenly I'm hit with the worst migraine I’ve ever felt. I grunt in pain. This must be what Lisa felt whenever she used her power too much. It lessens for less than a second before coming back, and then lessens again. I look up and see the grey bird demon who had been staring at me before. He’s looking between all three of us and holding his arms to the sides of his head. He’s in the doorway luckily or the others he is with might have started pouring in and we would be done for. However, as I try to reach for the carbine again, he looks at me extra long before moving to the others. The others Birdman’s with says something but I can’t register it well enough with the pain. They were going to come in and this would be over.

Remembering how my silk launched out like a projectile, I wait for him to look at me again and then fire off twin streams of silk at him. He shields himself from my projectile silk and I reach for the gun. Angel seems to have the same idea. I don’t bother trying for anything fancy. Just center mass and pull the trigger. The carbine gives a kick with each of my three pulls of the trigger, and I hear Angel’s Tommy and a bunch of other guns firing as I watch the bird man get ripped to shreds by lead. Once more, I feel something.

“Suppressing fire now!” I shout hoping that Angel understands what I mean. Whether or not he does however is irrelevant as he keeps firing at the corpse of Birdman and keeping their other compatriots from trying to advance through the room. Considering the kick from the carbine, this thing must at least have the power for what I’m planning on doing. I try to ignore the gunfire and focus more on my antennae’s magic sense. My hopes pay off and I see some of the fuzziness of magic through the walls. Sighting the centre mass of the largest concentration of fuzz at the back of their group, I let out three shots, and hear a scream of pain that brings a slight smile to my lips. Quickly I switch targets to the less powerful centres of fuzz. Three shots, switch, three shots, switch, three shots.

I approach the door and peek around the corner, ready to duck back into Angel’s apartment if any of them happen to still be in fighting condition. All four however are in no shape to fight as they are bleeding out and curled on the ground. Even so, I line up an execution shot for each, ending any kind of threat they might pose to us, until they heal back up. With each execution, I feel something. The raccoon demon at the back “gives” the same as the dog demon and the bird man, but the weasel, ant and canine demons barely gave enough for me to even notice. I pick up the pistols that they had and retreat back into the apartment. They had come for someone, likely me considering they had said that “she” was in this apartment, and they might have called in back up just in case they failed. Angel still has his Tommy up but he has his other guns on the table being reloaded with his other pairs of hands.

“They're dead?” Angel asks. I nod as I engage the safety and find the button to release the magazine of the carbine. I look over the magazine, and spot on the side it says that the magazine has a 25 round capacity. I shot five guys with three bullets each, then four more with their executions, meaning I had about six bullets left, not ideal, maybe I should have been more conservative with my bullets. I’ll have to see if two rifle calibre rounds were enough to take down a demon long enough to execute them.

I load the magazine back into the carbine and start patting down the dog demon. Luckily, He had two spare magazines. I also see a small bag that was tied to his pants belt. I untie that with my other limbs as I look him over for any kinds of symbols, but I don’t find anything of the like. Who were these people working for? I find a phone instead of a symbol. Generic background, most people like to personalise their phones, and password protected too. I put that in one of the pockets of my costume. Meanwhile I swap out the nearly empty magazine for a fresh one and put both the nearly empty one and the spare in the bag. I could hold the extra mags in there. Skidmark is already on the rather small bird man. In fact, with how small it looked, it almost looked more like a bird boy than a bird man.

Unfortunate but irrelevant at the moment, he had made his choice. We’d just defended ourselves. I start to make my way to the door to loot the other bodies of their ammo when I start hearing gunfire outside. Using my antennae, I sense the outside while I step beside the apartment window and peek out. I can hear a lot of gunfire and the squealing of tires. Lots of low caliber rounds going off, a not insignificant amount of higher calibers were being fired down there. I peek out the window and see people running for cover, taking videos on their phones, or running towards the firefight cocking pistols or ratcheting larger guns. Most of the ones with the guns looked to be Valentino’s enforcers.

Keeping from being spotted, I duck low and crouch walk to the other side of the window. It isn’t the smartest idea to be near a window when a gunfight was going on, but I want to see who’s fighting, maybe it would come in use later. I peek again, and all I can see is a large force of black clad and masked people advancing down the street, taking cover where they can and opening fire on damn well everyone and everything. I duck away from the window quickly before any stray bullets could accidentally find their way coming through the window. Unfortunately that little risk didn’t exactly pay off, but maybe I could find something on their phones?

Skidmark’s already gotten to the second one I had executed outside of Angel’s apartment, the ant. Angel meanwhile was looting the third, the canine. I take the liberty to waltz up to the one at the back that I had shot, the raccoon. He was the best dressed of them all. I push him over so that his corpse was lying on it’s back and start rifling through his pockets hoping to find his phone, and hopefully find it unlocked.

Then I hear a catchy little jingle coming from Skidmark. I turn around and see him pull out a stylish and expensive looking cell phone that wasn’t his. He probably got it from one of our assailants. He hits the receive call button and waits a second as a voice from the other side comes through.

“Brainiache, this is Snipes, did you take down that mind controlling bitch?” Brainiache. I know that name. I think he was a Ward in some other PRT/Protectorate department. We had met briefly during one of the cross department meetups. He had the power to induce highly debilitating migraines to any that he saw. He had been pretty new and didn’t really take his Wards training seriously, more there to have fun and meet other capes while being a hero. I… it’s vague but I think I remember briefly controlling him, before he was killed by an errant blast from Scion though I couldn’t really be sure. There was so many capes and powers under my control it was hard to pick out just a single one. While I pondered the name, Skidmark got a grin on his face.

“I’m sorry Snipes, it seems that Birdbrain ain’t able to take your call at the moment, I can take a message though,” the call after that went very quiet for a moment, before the voice on the other end, Snipes, comes through again, a barely restrained rage clearly audible for us to hear.

“What… did you do… to Brainiache?” I watch the phone intently. I think I remember Snipes as well. Another Ward. I don’t remember if they were from the same department but it wouldn’t be too far fetched. She had been some sort of minor Tinker/Thinker combo who specialised in long range sniper rifles and killing or incapacitating from afar. In training exercises with her we had to deal with an extremely good sniper who used fast acting tranquilliser darts. I had dealt with her easy enough when I had my bugs back then in the one training match we had been told to participate in. Simply fill her rifle with enough bugs while munching at delicate Tinker parts and the rifle had been rendered inoperable. I didn’t expect to have as easy a time if she was on the field and baying for my blood this time however.

“Oh Birdbrain here? Well me and my pals introduced him to the classic American greeting to home invaders, lead, and lots of it,” Angel joins in on taunting the ex Ward.

“Looks like his blood got splattered half way up the damn wall on the other side of the damn room, haha,” Skidmark added helpfully. Snipes had been hot headed and had raged when I had defeated her and her team in the training exercise. She said it wasn’t fair and demanded a rematch. I think I had just brushed her off. I didn’t really care to be there. It was more of a meet and greet, and I had more training exercises to do with other teams that were more competent than hers.

“When I find you fucks, I’m going to blow your fucking brains out, burn your corpses and spread the ashes all across Pentagram city,” I’m tempted to tell Snipes to stand down. While I had never been a ward team leader, I had commanded enough authority that people listened usually listened to me back then.

However, she was after me. Apparently someone had seen me just long enough to be able to positively identify me as the one mind controlling people at the end of the world. The two had known me, or rather known of me, during my Ward days and had probably spread that Weaver had been the one mind controlling people at the end of the world. I didn’t like it, but this costume was at the moment a liability. I’m about to transform it back to my rather comfortable fluffy fur coat when I realise that I had already been spotted in this costume, and people were acting on the appearance of it. They had already seen myself as Weaver come in with Skidmark. If they spotted Skidmark without Weaver, but me instead, it might paint a target on my back as well. Looks like it's back to secret identities, at least at the moment. After this I should look into possibly a different costume, or possibly an old one.

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Taylor really didn't care about people while she was in the Wards beyond her team did she?

Anywho, if you have any questions about this feel free to ask since I will probably try to answer them to the best of my ability without spoiling too much hopefully!

Also yes I will be going back and breaking up those paragraphs at the end.